PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN FOREIGN SERVICE ASSOCIATION APRIL 2015 40 YEARS AFTER THE FALL OF SAIGON THE FOREIGN SERVICE IN VIETNAM CITIZENSHIP AND UNWED BORDER MOMS FOREIGN April 2015 SERVICE Volume 92, No. 3 FOCUS ON THE FOREIGN SERVICE IN VIETNAM AFSA NEWS 2014 Survey—AFSA Listens History Revisted / 20 to Its Members / 71 BY SHAWN DORMAN 2014 Survey—State Members Respond / 72 VP Voice State: Open Plan Offices— Viet Cong Attack on Embassy Saigon, 1968 / 22 Boon or Bane? / 74 BY ALLAN WENDT VP Voice FCS: Some Good News / 75 From Whitehouse to the White House / 25 Look for Your Ballot: Vote in the AFSA Election / 75 BY KENNETH QUINN VP Voice Retiree: My Three Laws / 76 Mobilizing for South Vietnam’s Last Days / 33 AFSA Hosts Va. Congressman / 77 BY PARKER W. BORG 2014 Tax Guide: Clarification / 77 Capitol Hill Panel Discusses Women in Diplomacy / 78 Saigon Sayonara / 37 Sinclaire Language Award BY JOSEPH MCBRIDE Recipients / 79 AFSA Community: A New Way Finding My Heroes, Finding Myself: to Engage / 79 AFSA at the Bureau of From Refugee Child to State Department Official / 43 Diplomatic Security / 80 BY ANNE D. PHAM Tax News: Foreign Earned Income Exemption Denials / 80 AFSA Welcomes New Interns / 81 Doing Social Work in Southeast Asia / 50 Helping Our Afghan and Iraqi BY LANGE SCHERMERHORN Colleagues / 82 Counterinsurgency in Vietnam: Lessons for Today / 53 COLUMNS President’s Views / 7 BY RUFUS PHILLIPS How to Find the Next Bill Burns BY ROBERT J. SILVERMAN Vietnam Today / 63 Speaking Out / 16 BY MURRAY HIEBERT Citizenship and Unwed Border Moms: The Misfortune of Geography Return to Vietnam: Observations in 2015 / 66 BY AMELIA SHAW BY PARKER W. BORG Reflections / 96 Vietnam: Endings and Beginnings BY BRUCE A. BEARDSLEY APPRECIATION DEparTMENTS L etters / 8 A True Gentleman: Theodore S. Wilkinson III / 83 Talking Points / 12 Books / 85 A lifelong AFSA member, Ted served as the association’s elected president Local Lens / 98 from 1989 to 1991 and as FSJ Editorial Board chair from 2005 to 2011. BY STEVEN ALAN HONLEY MARKETPLacE Classifieds / 87 Real Estate / 90 Index to Advertisers / 95 O n the cover: On the afternoon of April 29, 1975, Joe Gettier left the embassy against the orders of the U.S. ambassador to save people. With the help of Mel Chatman and Bill Egan, Gettier used barges pulled by tug boats at Khanh Hoi Saigon Port. Photo by Nik Wheeler, courtesy of Anne Pham. THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2015 5 FOREIGN SERVICE S Editor Shawn Dorman: [email protected] Managing Editor www.afsa.org Susan Brady Maitra: [email protected] Associate Editor Debra Blome: [email protected] CONTACT Editorial/Publications Specialist AFSA Headquarters: Labor Management Brittany DeLong: [email protected] (202) 338-4045; Fax (202) 338-6820 General Counsel Ad & Circulation Manager State Department AFSA Office: Sharon Papp: [email protected] Ed Miltenberger: [email protected] (202) 647-8160; Fax (202) 647-0265 Deputy General Counsel Art Director USAID AFSA Office: Zlatana Badrich: [email protected] Caryn Suko Smith (202) 712-1941; Fax (202) 216-3710 Labor Management Specialist FCS AFSA Office: James Yorke: [email protected] Editorial Intern (202) 482-9088; Fax (202) 482-9087 Senior Staff Attorney Shannon Mizzi Neera Parikh: [email protected] Advertising Intern GOVERNING BOARD Staff Attorney William Read President Raeka Safai: [email protected] Contributing Editor Robert J. 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Patrick Bradley: [email protected] Javier Cuebas: [email protected] Senior Legislative Assistant Postmaster: Send address changes to BUSINESS Department David Murimi: [email protected] AFSA Director of Finance Professional Issues and Policy Adviser Attn: Address Change Femi Oshobukola: [email protected] Janice Weiner: [email protected] 2101 E Street NW Controller Washington DC 20037-2990 Kalpna Srimal: [email protected] SCHOLARSHIPS Assistant Controller Scholarship Director Cory Nishi: [email protected] Lori Dec: [email protected] Scholarship Senior Associate Jonathan Crawford: [email protected] 6 APRIL 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL PRESIDENT’S VIEWS How to Find the Next Bill Burns BY ROBERT J. Silverman olleagues, I want to share advancement leads to a self-fulfilling lack is not solely about the number of career with you the meat of a memo of available career talent. versus political appointments. It is also I sent to the participants in Let’s stay with Bill Burns, and consider about keeping those with high policy rel- C the Secretary’s senior retreat two of his positions that led to wider evance from going political. Focusing on held on March 11. It previews a specific responsibilities. From 1988 to 1991, Bill ambassadors is relatively easy because, in proposal that AFSA made to the Director served as the principal deputy director of the end, nominating them is the presi- General to revise the Schedule B hiring the Secretary’s policy planning staff, his dent’s prerogative, and all we can do is try authority and cap the number of political- first major policy job. That position long our best. appointee deputy assistant secretaries. ago shifted to political appointees. From The harder part is to focus on senior Over the past months, several of you 2005 to 2008, Bill served as ambassador to positions in the department. I suggest have raised with me the question of how Moscow before returning to Washington as a pragmatic matter focusing on those to identify the next Bill Burns, the next as under secretary for political affairs. hired under Schedule B authority. Sched- Foreign Service leader. In the last five years, that job has gone, ule Bs were originally intended as subject Finding the next Bill Burns is more first, to a political appointee and then to a matter experts and technical advisers akin to farming than hunting. It is not retired FSO. needed for non-recurring limited-term about spotting and bagging the single Now there are other ways for career purposes. These hires are within the sole most-talented person in the bureaucracy. employees to move up other than Bill’s purview of the State Department. It is about cultivating and preserving specific path. Probably there are under- I suggest two measures. First, let’s a personnel system that allows talented standable reasons why each of these jobs return Schedule B hiring to its original career people like Bill to rise up. It is was taken out of the Foreign Service.